From: Adam Kempenaar
To: Sam Hallgren; Eric Baker
Subject: Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech
I heard Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post on "The Tony Kornheiser Show" last Friday criticize Todd Haynes' ode to 1950s-era melodrama by saying that it was like watching a story unfold inside a museum -- the whole movie is too artifical, a replication of an idealized version of the 50s. I appreciated Hunter's remarks because he made a point that I've made before in relation to other movies set within specific time periods, which is that filmmakers often present characters who behave as if they are aware what era they're living in, with all the cultural baggage attached. But of course, people who were alive in the 50s didn't approach their daily existences any different than we do now. They didn't sit around saying things to each other like, "Boy, it sure is great we live in such an innocent time, though we are a bit close-minded and prejudiced, huh?" One of the reasons 'Donnie Darko' is such a great movie is because writer/director Richard Kelly, for the most part, avoids this mistake. Aside from some cuts on the soundtrack, the film doesn't exploit its 80s setting so much that it becomes a TV sitcom. With 'Far From Heaven', there's a certain electricity, suspense even, in the fact that the movie continually seems to be just on the verge of turning into Pleasantville, a laughably cartoonish version of the 50s -- one that surely never existed in reality because Haynes isn't trying to create a romanticized version of the 50s as much as he is re-creating the romanticized version of the 50s as displayed in popular films and television shows of the time. Sam didn't enjoy Haynes' post-modernist exercise as much as I did because for Sam that's all it was. I'm not sure I have anything insightful to say to change his mind. In a way, 'Heaven' is just a film exercise, perhaps similar to De Palma's 'Femme Fatale', which I found to be such an exercise in style over substance that I didn't care about a single character -- and I don't even mean "care" in a sympathetic way; I mean I had no interest whatsoever in their lives. And therein lies the difference between 'Femme Fatale' and 'Heaven' for me. While Haynes lets most of the supporting characters play the caricatures -- including, as Sam says, Dennis Haysbert, who never fully seems genuine as Moore's gardener/personal confidant -- he allows Moore and Quaid to deliver two of the best, most nuanced performances of the year. In the case of Cathy and Frank Whitaker, dubbed Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech because Quaid's character is a successful TV salesman, I didn't just find them interesting, I cared about how their lives were going to turn out. Sam writes: "In the end, Haynes seemed more concerned with re-creating the "reality" of a Sirk picture than with the emotional reality of his characters." It's a great line, and probably true for a number of people who saw or will see the movie, but I thought Haynes made Cathy and Frank wholly consistent emotionally. If Haynes was simply interested in skewering 1950s sensibilities, he could have made the biggest concern for both Cathy and Frank be their social status -- how the perfect life they've built for themselves with the huge house, ornate furniture and fabulously swanky dinner parties would all be coming to an end because they dared to rock the boat. But it's clear that Frank never enjoyed any of that stuff anyway, and while he tries to get treatment to reverse his little "problem" with homosexuality, his only concern in the end (even at the expense of Cathy and their kids) is finding love. The same is true for Cathy, who never laments the loss of her gossipy friends or her reputation within the upper crust of Hartford society. Instead, she is anguished because her friendship and potential love affair with Raymond Deagan (Haysbert) cannot continue. Their surroundings may be as artifical as a museum exhibit, but Cathy and Frank are as "real" as any movie character can be.
But Jones had one thing that 'Bittersweet' director Todd Phillips didn't have, something every good documentarian has to have -- luck. Like Phillips, who followed Phish on tour through parts of 1997 and 1998, Jones merely set out to document a significant period in Wilco's career -- the recording of an album, albeit one that was being hailed as a major step forward for the band even before they had finished recording it. What he ended up capturing was arguably the biggest story of the year in the music industry as Wilco's label, Reprise Records (owned by Time Warner), deemed the album unworthy of release and subsequently dropped the band from its label, only to have Wilco sell the album to another label (Nonesuch) and watch it become a relatively huge hit. And the best part of it all is that Nonesuch's parent company is, you guessed it, Time Warner -- an ironic twist that the documentary acknowledges in the end but probably doesn't fully exploit, as 
If Jones really wanted to make simply a pro-Wilco documentary, he could have very easily aligned himself with Tweedy and let Bennett, who is, admittedly, kind of annoying, come across as the bad guy. As it is, Tweedy ends up looking like a little dictator, someone who can't stand anyone else sharing his credit. Although Bennett's explanation for his dismissal comes off as a bit whiny, Jones lends some credence to Bennett's claim that Tweedy is only interested in surrounding himself with sycophants by intercutting Bennett's dialogue with footage of Tweedy playing the guitar and singing in a coffee-house setting with the other three Wilco members looking on adoringly. But even with all of this drama, 'I Am Trying' is ultimately about the music and the making of one of the best rock albums in recent memory. If you don't agree with this claim, however, chances are you won't find the movie to be half as fascinating as I did.
